A Modern Tragedy

by Phyllis Bentley

  And at last it seemed that the climax came to his wretchedness.

  One autumn day at their scanty midday meal, Mrs. Schofield was nagging Milner. She attacked him less often than she did Harry, for Milner, being still firmly convinced that he was in the right on the Lumb dispute, and a practised debater, sometimes gave her as good as he got.

  “I don’t know how you can sleep at night with all them Lumbs’ men on your mind—and their wives and childer too!” said Mrs. Schofield with an air of virtuous indignation.

  “We must expect to suffer to bring a new era to birth,” intoned Milner with passion, in his “platform” voice, his eyes gleaming, quite forgetting to eat. “We’re victims of the class war, and we should be proud of it.”

  “Well,” began Mrs. Schofield. The gleam in her eye revealed that she was about to say something particularly telling, when Jessie suddenly exclaimed:

  “Oh, let Milner be!”

  Harry started in his chair, and shot her a glance of furious jealousy. Turbulent feelings warred madly in his heart. His months of unemployment had so lowered him, he felt so inferior, so unwanted and unwantable, that he actually resented his wife’s interference on his brother’s behalf, was actually jealous of it. All the times he had noticed, in the past, that Milner thought him lucky to win Jessie, now flashed through his mind; he was ready to believe that Jessie despised him, preferred Milner, that the coming child even was not his. When had Jessie interfered with his mother on his behalf, when, when? A faint glimmering in the darkness of his heart assured him of the truth, namely that Jessie had defended Milner simply because her patience had given out, and she was tired of Mrs. Schofield’s everlasting scolding, tired of Milner’s political replies: he struggled to believe this, to reassure himself that Jessie was still his and still loved him. At length, after a long moment of utter wretchedness, he found he did believe it, and the world settled down about him once more; but his heart was still sore and bleeding when Jessie stabbed him again.

  “I’d go back to t’loom mysen,” said Jessie thoughtfully, “if only I weren’t carrying.”

  “Well, by gow!” thought Harry in a fury. “That caps all, that does!” He crimsoned with rage. That Jessie should wish she wasn’t bearing his child, so that she might return to the mill and work to keep him—well! Of course it was said that there were plenty of houses in Yorkshire and Lancashire to-day where the wife went out to work and left the husband at home to look after the children; there were even one or two in Thwaite Street where that was the case. Nor was it unknown, or even unusual, that a pregnant woman should tend a loom. But that Harry Schofield’s wife should ever be in that position! No! It was more than he could stand!

  “I reckon you wouldn’t find a loom waiting for you, my lass,” he said aloud grimly. “There’s a good few looms standing i’ Hudley just now.” And to himself he thought: “Summat’s got to be done.”

  As soon as the meal was over, he took his cap silently and went out without Nance, sternly refusing the request in her pleading eyes. He went straight up through the park to the free library, walking purposefully, not with the slouch which was becoming habitual to him because he had nowhere to go and was always just passing the time.

  Milner had often told him about the reading-room at the library, but he had never been there before, and he now entered it rather distrustfully. The large windows admitted so much light that the room was quite disagreeably dazzling, he thought, and the huge glossy stands of light wood, bearing unfamiliar newspapers, intimidated him. But he was determined not to be beaten, and after a minute, when his nerves had settled down, he saw that most of the people standing in front of the newspapers were of the same type as himself—unemployed men, with cloth caps, white scarves folded across their throats, patched trousers, broken boots, and a general look of fading hope and growing anxiety.

  Presently he recovered himself sufficiently to notice a list, framed and hanging on the wall. He consulted it, discovered the numbers of the stands where the copies of last night’s Hudley News were displayed, and slowly made his way through the gangways towards them. Both were engaged; both had a little group of men near by, pretending to be unconcerned, but really waiting to consult them. Harry joined the smaller group, and after a rather long wait, got his turn. He studied every advertisement with meticulous care, but nobody in Hudley seemed to want a cloth finisher of any description. Disappointed, yet hardly surprised, he passed on to read the county newspapers, which covered a wider area; for he would go anywhere, he decided fiercely—he had already seen that phrase in the advertisement of someone wanting a situation. Well! There was nothing for him to-day, but he’d come there till there was something. There must be some jobs vacant sometimes, surely. Look at Arnold Lumb’s advertisement, for instance. Here Harry remembered the crowd of men who had streamed into the Valley Mill office, and winced. But no matter. Somebody had got those jobs, and that somebody might one day be Harry Schofield. Why not go to Valley Mill, now, by the way, and see if Mester Arnold would take him back? He was Isaiah’s son, after all; and, in spite of Milner, union men were working there.

  “Be hanged to Milner!” said Harry; and he went to Valley Mill.

  Arnold received him kindly, and withholding from him the fact that he was by no means the first to come on the same errand, promised to put his name down for a vacancy if one should occur.

  “But I reckon I know your work better than them you’ve got on the job now,” protested Harry.

  “I daresay,” agreed Arnold. But he went on to explain that he had promised his new workers, when they took the risk of flouting their union by working for him, not to turn them out to reinstate his former men. “So I can do nothing unless one happens to leave or die,” said Arnold grimly.

  “There’s not likely to be a place for me yet awhile, then?” said Harry in an artificially cheerful tone.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Arnold.

  Harry gave him a good-afternoon, and left. But oddly enough this interview, so far from depressing him, only stimulated him to further effort. It was long since he had been inside a mill, or seen men at work; now the mere sound of the machinery, the cheerful manner of the foreman as he put his head in at Mr. Arnold’s door and shouted a request to him to come and look at a piece, made Harry’s heart beat fast with hope and excitement. Work still went on, then; the West Riding wasn’t all quite silent; some men had work and went home happily to their families. He would do the same yet; he’d show them all!

  He decided to say nothing of his new hopes, his recovered manhood, until he had actually found a job, and he was cold and reserved when Jessie mildly tried to find out where he had been. He was still angry with Jessie. At the bottom of his heart he knew that she loved him, but he could not yet forgive her for seeming to disparage him and his unborn child.

  He now called at the Employment Exchange registration department, not only on the mornings when the business of signing on and drawing benefit took him to the other side of the building, but every day. Every day he went to the reading room, picking his times carefully so that he should not meet Milner by the way; every day he returned silent, musing, preoccupied—there was nothing in the papers, or at the Exchange, suitable for him to apply for. He gradually began to feel that he must maintain this reserve until he found something to do; it was his last support, his last shred of courage; if it went, he would go too, collapse into a mere wreck of a man.

  Jessie was frightened, then saddened, by the withdrawal of his confidence; her kind eyes followed him about the house wistfully. She tried, indeed, once or twice to bring him back to her by a timid caress, but he looked at her so scornfully, and laughed so harshly, that she removed the hand she had placed on his arm, without saying anything. At night he never spoke to her; no longer did they sleep with arms entwined.

  It was about a fortnight after Harry’s first visit to the library, and he had still found no advertisement which could concern him, when one wild windy afternoon he saw in the p
revious day’s Hudley News a photograph of Walter Haigh. It was a photograph taken some years ago, and Walter looked just as Harry remembered him at Valley Mill. Beside this photograph was another, a lovely portrait of a lovely girl. Harry slowly read the caption beneath the pair:

  Miss Elaine Clay Crosland of Clay Hall, whose engagement is

  announced to Mr. Walter Haigh of Heights near Hudley.

  Harry felt interested: Walter Haigh, old Dyson’s son; fancy! A paragraph among the personal news gave Walter’s history: Director of Messrs. Tasker, Haigh and Company, read Harry, in charge of that firm’s dyeing and finishing plant at Heights Mill.

  “By gow!” cried Harry joyfully. He put on his cap and rushed from the room.

  He had not wasted money on a public conveyance for weeks, but somehow he felt that this occasion was worth risking a copper for; he hurried into town, took a penny bus-fare, walked the rest of the hill, and soon found himself turning down the lane to Heights.

  “He’ll be in a good humour, too, just being tokened,” thought Harry, almost running in his eagerness to try his luck.

  At Heights the office clerk was sharp with him, but he said firmly that he had come from Valley Mill. Rather perplexed, the clerk said he might wait, but added that Mr. Haigh was very busy down in the mill, and that unless it was urgent he wouldn’t call him up for Harry alone.

  “It isn’t urgent,” admitted Harry, fearful of the effect a summons of the kind might have on Walter’s temper. Though he was a kindly lad, reflected Harry, as far as he remembered him. Fancy him head of a big place like this! While Harry and Milner hung about, unemployed. It wasn’t a fair do; Milner was likely right enough about the class war, after all. Harry stood by the door, cap in hand, and gradually cooled and grew disheartened, waiting.

  Half an hour later Walter came in with a quick step, a frown on his forehead and a paper in his hand. He fired off a question, and at once there was a bustle in the place: the day book was consulted, the house-telephone used. His question at last answered, Walter was about to hurry on, when the head clerk nodded his head in the direction of Harry, and Walter turned to him. Neither he nor Harry knew each other at first, so changed (though in different ways) were they both, but after a minute, recognition was mutual.

  “Why, it’s Harry Schofield!” said Walter. He sounded agreeably surprised, and Harry took heart.

  “I thought you might have a bit o’ something for me, Mester Walter,” he began nervously, twisting his cloth cap about in his hands. “We’ve had a bit of a do, like, down at Valley, as I daresay you’ve heard tell, and I’m wanting a job.”

  Walter gave him an odd look, and stood silent, considering. He did not need a tenterer now, but he could possibly find Harry a place in the packing room, and work him in at his own job later. And the whim came over him to do so, to take Harry on. Walter’s whole position now—director of Tasker’s, engaged to Elaine, manager of Heights—was, he reflected cynically, in point of fact due to the Schofield brothers. If they had not allowed piece 28641—how its number sprang up in his memory as soon as he thought of the incident—to become damaged, Walter would never have met Tasker, never seen Elaine. Of course the damage was an accident; it might have happened to anybody, it was not in any sense a result of the Schofields’ volition, indeed it was hardly even their fault; still, there were the facts. And Walter felt that Harry Schofield was his “luck,” his mascot, as it were. How odd it was, thought Walter, that Harry should turn up like this, just when Walter had reached his highest point so far, gained his dearest wish, become formally betrothed! He accepted the omen; he must acknowledge the luck Harry had brought, or the fates might turn against him. He’d find room for him somewhere; a decent, reliable chap like Harry was never amiss. Besides, Walter was used to indulging his whims now, and liked doing so; it made him feel powerful, gave him room to breathe.

  With all these motives seething in his mind, he said suddenly, with a reckless air: “Well, I daresay I can put you in.”

  Harry involuntarily made a strange sound in his throat.

  “You know what we pay, I expect,” went on Walter carelessly, naming a wage below the union rate. “We aren’t a union shop here. If you like to come for that, you can.”

  There was a pause. Harry stood turning his cloth cap slowly about in his hands.

  “I don’t reckon I can do that, Mester, Walter,” he said at length, his forehead damp with sweat. “I’m a union man, you know.”

  “Well, take it or leave it,” said Walter impatiently. “I don’t care which. Make up your mind, that’s all.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I’ll tek it,” gasped Harry.

  “Right! Well, start to-morrow at the usual time,” said Walter. He hurried on into the inner office, throwing over his shoulder instructions as to what work the new man was to be set to do.

  Harry rushed out of the mill, along the lane, down the long hill and up through Hudley to Thwaite Street, burst into his home and cried out, panting: “Jessie! Jessie!”

  “Whatever is it, love?” cried his wife in alarm, running out of the scullery to meet him.

  “Get out my overalls, lass,” shouted Harry proudly: “I’ve got a job.”

  “Oh, Harry!” cried Jessie, tears of joy coming into her eyes. “Tha never has!”

  “Eh, but I have!” cried Harry triumphantly. “I’m starting in t’morning.”

  Jessie threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. Harry clasped her closely to him, entangling his hands in the straps of her rubber apron across her back; they both laughed at his clumsiness, and suddenly were sobbing on each other’s shoulders. The estrangement of the last few weeks was not so much forgotten as erased from their minds as they gulped and kissed.

  “Aye, you may well teem,” said Mrs. Schofield, regarding them with satisfaction over her shoulder while she filled the kettle and set it on the fire, to make the cup of tea which she felt the emotion of the occasion demanded. “It were about time one on you got a job, it were that.”

  This recalled Milner to Harry’s mind, and at once he felt uneasy. His arms slackened about Jessie’s waist, and he said thoughtfully: “I reckon our Milner won’t be so pleased.”

  “Why not?” asked Jessie, but not as though she greatly cared to know.

  “It isn’t a union job,” said Harry, rather shamefaced.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Jessie consolingly.

  But Mrs. Schofield, who like the prophet of old never prophesied comfortable things when asked to do so, said at once: “Eh, but that’s awkward, lad. It never pays to get across wi’ thy union, tha knows.”

  “Well, I can’t help it,” said Harry defiantly. “It’s not a union shop. It’s at Heights wi’ young Walter Haigh—you know, mother, Dyson’s son. He’s got a nice place there. They look busy, too.”

  “Dyson Haigh! Eh, I remember the day he were wed,” said Mrs. Schofield in a sentimental tone. She embarked on a series of involved anecdotes about Dyson Haigh and her husband, who had each worked for Messrs. Lumb for such a length of years. Her eyes sparkled as she thus recalled the past, she laughed at the remembrance of Isaiah’s and Dyson’s mutual repartees, and her annoyance about the nonunion character of Harry’s new work died away. The fact that it was a job under Dyson Haigh’s son made it respectable in her eyes.

  Milner, returning drearily to the sombre household he had left, was astonished to find everyone in high spirits. He had already met Dorothy in the street, eating a substantial “piece” of bread and treacle; Jessie was singing softly to herself in the scullery; Harry sat dandling Hal on his knee; Mrs. Schofield was actually just putting down a plate of scraps for Nance. Milner could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the last occurrence; he stared about him in amaze—and his eyes lighted upon Harry’s blue overalls, hung over the brass rod below the mantelpiece to air. At once he guessed Harry’s good news. A dark and bitter flood of envy seemed to rise in his throat. He choked it down and said hoarsely:

&n
bsp; “You’ve got a job, I reckon?”

  Harry turned a flushed and happy face to him—the child, erect on his father’s lap, was making joyous onslaughts on his hair.

  “Aye—at Heights wi’ young Walter Haigh. Mind, lovey! You may as well know first as last, Milner,” went on Harry in a dry tone, trying to unclasp the tight little fists, but only provoking a delicious scuffle, “It’s not a union job.”

  The blood rushed to Milner’s face.

  “Aren’t you ashamed?” he panted in a fury. “Don’t you know every time a man takes non-union rates he pushes all t’workers in t’world back a step? I never thought a brother of mine would have acted so. I never thought,” said Milner with frightful bitterness, “that a Schofield would have turned scab.”

  “Well, by gow!” shouted Harry, springing to his feet, all the bitterness of the last few months suddenly rushing to his lips. “I like that from you, Milner Schofield! I like that, I do, when it were all your fault I were out of a job to start wi’. We should be working at Lumb’s to-day if it wasn’t for your pig-headed way o’ going on. You’re too fond o’ t’ sound of your own voice, that’s what’s the matter wi’ you. Your head’s so swollen you can’t see straight. You’re that proud there’s no living wi’ you.”

  “If you feel that way,” panted Milner, very pale, “I’d better clear out.”

  “Don’t talk like a fool, Milner Schofield,” said his mother at this, from the hearth. (Jessie, at the scullery door, gazed at the scene wide-eyed, but knew intuitively that Harry would be furious if she interfered.) “Where would you go?”

  “I don’t care where I go,” panted Milner, “but I won’t stay here.”

  “Nay, Milner,” protested Harry, who, now that he had expressed his bitterness and it was past, remembered only his affection for his brother: “I didn’t mean owt o’ that sort, lad. This is your home, same as it’s mine.”